It's been widely accepted, especially in chat, that "inflation in WP is going crazy". I set to figure out actual numbers and figures to back it up.

I initially did set out to measure multiple goods too, but then it's proven quite difficult to do that as occasionally it'll be sold out which kind of ruins the spreadsheet numbers - I'll get those running as soon as I can.

As of now though the main measure of inflation - apples - is solidly built though.

So... welp. Here goes.

In Brief;

(Last update - 10 Sep)

Wolfplay's annual inflation rate is at 68%, classified as galloping inflation. This is 34x the acceptable inflation rate for a normal economy, comparable to 26 years of steady inflation.

The economy is volatile, however it has a stable average. While prices fluctuate by large margins, they will generally always eventually rebound back to the average price.

The average price of an apple is 1370.

In Depth;

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The graph actually works now-

Currently here is the monitor for Apple inflation tracking.

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WP's economy is small. Prices are generally set by one person - whoever's selling at the lowest cost. This proves for a rather volatile market - unlike large economies, there simply isn't much supply. Therefore, whoever's selling the lowest price at my time of measurement simply sets the price value, as there is no other large competitor values to compare them to.

At current prices, there is an equal amount of apples supplied versus people willing to buy it at this price. If this was not the case, the average would not be stable and would be changing in one direction or the other.

If apple prices were lower, more people would want to buy more apples at the lower price. Yet, not as many people would be willing to sell apples at a lower price - and therefore unless one of the two factors magically change (people want to buy less apples, or suddenly people selling them suddenly feel really generous) the price is at a stable equilibrium.

Even if this equilibrium point is significantly higher than historically accepted values.

Ditto for if prices were higher. At a higher price, less people are willing to buy it, and the price falls as people no longer buy the higher priced apples.

This is (in a nutshell) why the economy is classified volatile but stable.

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Why are prices so high?

I'll try to keep this part brief.

- Less people willing to sell apples
- Mush is now easier to get/more plentiful across the economy
- More mush circulating in the economy, devaluing products and therefore apples
- People become desperate, buy the higher priced apples with more of their mush

=> Prices increase <=

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What can we do to change the price?

The short answer - unless you're willing to spend a lot of money, are the miniser of the reserve bank (which we don't have one), or have superpowers... no.

The long answer -

WP is a closed economy. MV = PQ, where the money supply multiplied by the velocity of circulation is equivalent to price level multiplied by quantity. The only way to change the price through this equation is by... literally, just being good enough to convince people to just ~not~ spend as much mush in the apple market.

Unfortunately I don't really see many ways to do that - unless you can convince people your inflationary expectations are true.

The unfortunate misconception people have is "if enough people sell apples at a lower price, inflation will drop". Sadly, that's not how it works - people will simply buy the cheaper apples until there aren't any more, and then subsequently the price will increase as the demand curve remains steady but the supply shifts again. Only if there is a CONSTANT supply shift (i.e, from the Game, not from players) could we potentially see a shift in the supply curve. (In reference to the rules, note I am not suggesting we should make apples easier - I'm just stating a way.) However, as both of these are.. unlikely... the short answer is no.